Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Consumer–resource interactions are the core motif of ecological food chains or food webs, [1] and are an umbrella term for a variety of more specialized types of biological species interactions including prey-predator (see predation), host-parasite (see parasitism), plant-herbivore and victim-exploiter systems.
Predation is a short-term interaction, in which the predator, here an osprey, kills and eats its prey. Short-term interactions, including predation and pollination, are extremely important in ecology and evolution. These are short-lived in terms of the duration of a single interaction: a predator kills and eats a prey; a pollinator transfers ...
Peter Brussard and colleagues emphasize that ecosystem management balances preserving ecosystem health while sustaining human needs. [11] As a concept of natural resource management, ecosystem management remains both ambiguous and controversial, in part because some of its formulations rest on contested policy and scientific assertions. [12]
Ecosystems sustain life-supporting functions and provide ecosystem services like biomass production (food, fuel, fiber, and medicine), the regulation of climate, global biogeochemical cycles, water filtration, soil formation, erosion control, flood protection, and many other natural features of scientific, historical, economic, or intrinsic value.
Raccoons (Procyon lotor) and skunks (Mephitis mephitis) are mesopredators.Here they share cat food in a suburban backyard.. The mesopredator release hypothesis is an ecological theory used to describe the interrelated population dynamics between apex predators and mesopredators within an ecosystem, such that a collapsing population of the former results in dramatically increased populations of ...
Trophic cascades are powerful indirect interactions that can control entire ecosystems, occurring when a trophic level in a food web is suppressed. For example, a top-down cascade will occur if predators are effective enough in predation to reduce the abundance, or alter the behavior of their prey, thereby releasing the next lower trophic level from predation (or herbivory if the intermediate ...
The systemic origins of ecosystem-based management are rooted in the ecosystem management policy applied to the Great Lakes of North America in the late 1970s. The legislation created, the "Great Lakes Basin and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement of 1978", was based on the claim that "no park is an island", with the purpose to show how strict protection of the area is not the best method ...
The health of the overall population (and the size of the weakened population members) will also influence the way that parasites and diseases will transmit among members. [4] Additionally, competition and predation dynamics in the ecosystem can influence the density of potential hosts which can either propagate or limit the spread of diseases. [4]